IT Professionals New Zealand was founded in 1960 as the Computer Society. Photo / Getty Images
The tech industry’s oldest association has hit the wall after discovering its financial situation was far worse than it thought.
A message posted to the Information Technology Professionals New Zealand (ITP) website says the incorporated society, founded in 1960 as the Computer Society, “has reached a point where the organisation cannot continue. After a full review of our finances, the board has confirmed that ITP is insolvent”.
A special general meeting will be held on October 23 “to confirm liquidation and appoint a liquidator”.
The association has four staff listed on its website, plus fractional chief executive and general manager Liz Foxwell-Canning.
Accounts filed with the Incorporated Societies Register in July show an operating loss of $22,069 on revenue of $504,567 in its 2025 financial year – down from the prior year’s $592,342 revenue.
Total liabilities were $94,034 and total equity was $89,352.
“On paper, it’s not great, but it looks manageable,” ITP president Jamie Vaughan told Tech Insider.
But after filing its latest accounts mid-year, ITP’s board discovered two things were amiss.
Vaughan says around two weeks ago, the British Computing Society (BCS) cancelled its licence that allowed ITP to offer accreditation to IT professionals in the United States.
The board was shocked to discover bills to BCS had gone unpaid, long-term, Vaughan says.
That sparked a review that, in turn, uncovered that ITP was owed a lot more than it had thought. Money was owed by businesses that hadn’t paid bills and members who hadn’t paid their dues, among others, Vaughan said.
“Some of the debt is very historic and, realistically, the odds of us recovering it are low.”
The amounts were still being assessed, and Vaughan was not in an immediate position to share figures, but the sums involved are sufficiently daunting to trigger the October 23 liquidation vote.
“I joined the board because I wanted to contribute, and this is incredibly gutting for all of us involved. But ultimately, this is the most responsible decision.
The most recently available accounts, for 2021, show revenue of $1.2 million and a net deficit of $39,631.
A note on the accounts, filed on July 31 this year, says: “Audit reviews of 2022, 2023 and audit of 2024 [are] all currently under way.”
Aurora Financials had been appointed to conduct the reviews.
Accounts for 2022, 2023 and 2024 were not available through the Incorporated Societies Register this morning.
Vaughan said, “For three years, we haven’t been able to secure an auditor. We’ve spoken with many different firms and various individuals who could do it for us. We spent a lot of time waiting in queues for our accounts to be audited, but for whatever reason, that would fall over, we’d find another one, and the process would start over.
“It was very frustrating. We did find an auditor who was going to start immediately, a little bit earlier this year, but because our cash flow has been so constrained, we weren’t able to pay them.”
Word of ITP’s demise spread late yesterday as Wellington writer Peter Griffin revealed in his column for its website that it had been axed.
Griffin wrote: “A sad day for the tech industry, at a time when the IT [information technology] workforce is facing unprecedented change and AI [artificial intelligence] is shaking up skills requirements. It’s a very tough time to be running a membership organisation.”
ITP offered everything from training courses to escrow services to immigration assessments.
Commenting after Griffin’s post, tech industry veteran and former Tuanz chief executive Ernie Newman said, “A sad announcement. ITPNZ had its heyday in the days when Paul Matthews led it [Matthews was CEO between 2008 and 2022]. You knew what it stood for – better careers in IT, better standing for the professionals, more government support (custom, not money) for the sector.
“But since then, it felt like it drifted into non-core ‘woke’ issues and neglected its core ground.”
Griffin told Tech Insider there were other factors in play.
Younger tech workers were more likely to turn to the likes of Discord for advice, putting membership revenue under pressure.
And Matthews’ successor, Vic MacLennan, had to grapple with an environment where the Government cut funding to various Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and tech programmes, Griffin said.
The past year has also seen the winding down of NZRise, a lobby group on local IT procurement, other issues between 2011 and 2024, and the end of KiwiSaaS, OMGTech and NanoGirl Labs as Government funding was “reprioritised”.
The 2025 accounts also show a fall in immigration assessment revenue from $49,687 in 2024 to $15,826 and carry a note saying: “Immigration changes mean that immigration assessments continue to decline.”
The landscape has also shifted, with a pandemic-era tech talent squeeze turning into a labour surplus, with IT firm layoffs and a recession.
MacLennan finished her stint as CEO in August this year to travel, with Foxwell-Canning taking over.
The pending liquidation follows cuts to ITP staff, travel and other budgets and a cull of deadbeat members who hadn’t paid their dues, but the measures have not been enough to stave off the liquidation vote.
“It’s incredibly gutting for all of us involved,” Vaughan says.
“We’re 100% committed to making sure this community will still exist in some form or another, and that the best parts of it continue in some form or another.”
This story has been updated to correct Vic MacLennan’s departure date.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.